You are absolutely right, David. One of the first things Steve Minn did when
Ventura named him Commissioner of Public Service was to work on the area code
issue to assure that changes occurred in a way that would benefit the
consumer and not make it easy for then US West. There was tremendous
opposition from the industry, but good sense prevailed and today we have area
code lines which do benefit the consumer. I shudder to think what would have
happened if the industry would have had its way and new area codes would be
assigned to new phone numbers. That would have made a terrible jumble mess.
Another issue here too is that the great gods that give out area codes never
give two area codes in the same area at the same time. Thanks to Minn's
persistence, they knuckled under and saw the benefit of issuing two codes
instead of one. If that wouldn't have happened we would have had another
code separation within two years. Thanks for that too.
Karen Collier
Linden Hills
